In this issue, Silver Surfer realizes that the barrier that keeps him on Earth might not exist in the distant future, so he does a reverse Superman and spins the Earth forward really fast to make time move faster.
Let’s talk a bit about how weird this is. First, even assuming spinning the Earth could reverse time on Earth, why would it affect the whole universe? Because the world is what the Sun revolves around?
But more importantly, Silver Surfer was stuck on Earth sometime around 1969. Why wouldn’t he just spin backwards a few years to before the barrier was cast around the planet? I mean, it wasn’t a sure thing that the barrier would be gone in the future, but it damn sure wasn’t there in the past.
Anyway, his trip is a waste: Shalla Bal is long gone and the future is ruled by an evil alien killer.
In the end, it’s all back to normal–because every issue of this oversized comic is a one-and-done.
I don’t think Silver Surfer every displays this time-reversing power again.
Not a bad effort, although the inking on this particular issue was sub-par. They should have stuck with their regular guy. You raise an excellent point about the premise of this story, i.e., why did the Silver Surfer go to all the trouble of time-warping himself into the future where the Barrier most likely still exists- ( why wouldn’t it-?? Galactus is fully aware of the Silver Surfer’s immortality, so why wouldn’t he design the Barrier to last at least as long as the life of the Earth-??? ) instead of simply going BACKWARD in time just a few years, BEFORE the Barrier was erected-??? And here’s an even BETTER question: I first read this story 54 years ago, and have sporadically reread it, many times- so why hasn’t that question ever occurred to ME in 54 years-??? Duh-oh!!!